Drones and Tools for an aerial future.

The PeliHeli returns!

The flexible frame we had for the original flying Pelicase last year just wasn’t good enough. We have some nice slow-mo footage of it taking an impact and bouncing off. Which was cool, but it created a lot of airframe wobble. Plus the whole thing was rather large and unwieldy.

Earlier this year I set a challenge to try to make it smaller, more compact and since the Pelicase is waterproof, it would be cool to try and make the drone waterproof as well. It’s taken much longer than we thought but hey, it’s turned out so much better than we thought!

Amazingly space for everything

Low profile frame

Stiff (vertically) arms

As you can see, we ditched the bigger Peli 1020 case and got very cocky… trying to fit EVERYTHING (even the batteries) into the smaller Peli 1010 case. It took quite a bit of time and some very small fingers but we did slowly get there.

I still like the carbon strip arms, but lets arrange them vertically to get rid of the motor wobble but also give the smallest possible interference to prop down wash.

We may have bitten off more than we can chew. To get everything inside, with room for cables, buttons etc… every half mm started to count. There was no room for waste and it probably took 30 iterations to get it close to working.

Mobius Camera in a new shell and format. Every half mm is critical to make everything fit.

We did enjoy putting a GoPro on the front of the last PeliHeli but we need something that can stream FPV and since the case is transparent why not put a camera inside?

We chose to dismantle a Mobius Action Cam and rebuild the parts without it’s case. With some tweaks, this gave us FPV capability and the option to record at the same time.

This was becoming a real pain. The only thing we didnt want to tamper with was the batteries. Which left us with long lengths of cables and balance charging leads getting in the way. We even had to make our own wiring loom out of flat copper sheet as cables were too bulky.

Without batteries

With batteries

The curved corners of the case meant the batteries had to move closer to the middle, leaving us a space on the walls for the ESCs.